He and some 50 other protesters surfaced outside the beleaguered nuclear plant in the wake of a multitude of concerns about the plant expressed by the leader of a federal inspection team himself – concerns that only in-house Nuclear Regulatory Commission personnel were supposed to read. The email cites the inspector’s safety concerns, among others.

“We are here today to mobilize for survival,” Cape Downwinder member Diane Turco announced. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission special inspectors are back and we’re saying shut Pilgrim down now. You know they’ve identified, through that alarming email, the mismanagement - the systemic mismanagement - the lack of putting resources into fixing a nuclear reactor that threatens 5 million people within the 50-mile emergency planning zone. It’s time to shut this reactor down now.”

Turco was surrounded by nearly 50 like-minded protesters, holding signs urging the NRC to shut the plant down permanently now.

“I live in Plymouth, and we have been trying to get this nuke shut down for a long time,” Heidi Mayo of Pilgrim Watch said. “I really think that it’s negligent that this plant continues to run. As the leaked email said, these people are overwhelmed and they’re not doing the jobs the way they need to be. The nuke is so old and decrepit and we know it’s a bad design and the same design as Fukushima. It’s really time to close it down. It’s past time to close it down, way past time.”

For years, problems at the plant have made headlines. While plant supporters argue that the issues have been exaggerated and point to the loss of jobs and payment-in-lieu-of tax revenue as reasons to keep the plant going, Turco and others say Pilgrim, which is owned and operated by Entergy Corp., is a clear and present danger, period.

They say the leaked NRC email proves they’re right.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan stressed that the contents of the email were preliminary and not intended for the public. He noted that plant inspectors will release a final report approximately 45 days after the inspection ends Friday.

“The 95003 Phase C inspection is the next step in Pilgrim’s process toward a return to industry excellence,” Entergy spokesman Patrick O’Brien wrote in an email in response to a request for comment. “We have worked hard to address the issues that led to station performance decline and look forward to demonstrating to the NRC that we have made significant progress in these areas through the inspection process. Until the results of the 95003 Phase C inspection and the confirmatory action letter are released, we will not comment on the inspection.”

An NRC employee accidentally leaked the in-house email, penned by Don Jackson, “Team Lead” of the inspection group, to Turco in December, sparking a fire storm of outrage among those most concerned about the plant’s safety.

“We are observing current indications of a safety culture problem that a bunch of talking probably won’t fix,” the email reads. Jackson goes on to use words like “disturbing” and notes “poor engineering expertise, no communication with the shift manager, poor original corrective action and a senior manager stating a reluctance to assure operability due to a negative impact on the maintenance rule status.”

Earlier in the email, Jackson references specific, detailed examples and notes recurring problems with the emergency diesel generators. He adds that the “engineering group appears unprepared to answer all of the questions being posed by the team.” Jackson writes that plant operators are “very disjointed in their ability to populate meetings and answer questions. Staffing problems seem to impact how fast the licensee can respond.”

He also writes, "The corrective actions in the recovery plan seem to have been hastily developed and implemented, and some have been circumvented as they were deemed too hard to complete."

Turco wasn’t the only one alarmed.

Gov. Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey, the entire Congressional delegation, Senate President Stan Rosenberg, and three senators, including Vinny deMacedo, R-Plymouth, as well as nine representatives, including Mathew Muratore, R-Plymouth, Randy Hunt, R-Sandwich, and Tom Calter, D-Kingston, wrote a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week imploring it to hold a public forum to address heightened concerns about the safety of the plant.

The NRC has not granted that request.

“We hope to respond to that letter some time in the near future in terms of what we can say,” Sheehan added. “We are trying to be responsive to concerns raised by the governor and by the attorney general’s office, legislators and others and we hope to have an answer for them sometime soon.”

The leaked email made headlines just as false reports, leaky valves, corroded pipe supports, outdated safety gear and failed pumps at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station had been in the news for months, adding to the plant’s woes protesters say go back decades.

Susan Carpenter of South Dennis said she’s outraged the NRC allows the plant to continue to operate in light of all the failures; she said the plant is extremely dangerous, and the email proves it. While Pilgrim is slated for permanent shutdown in 2019, protesters say problems at the plant are a serious threat to public safety and that it should be shut down immediately.

“The internal memo that was received really sheds light on how bad the situation is here how,” Carpenter said. “It’s an accident waiting to happen. The staff is overwhelmed, as the email said. Just keeping up day-to-day the staff is overwhelmed. The spent fuel is stored on top of the reactor. It was built for a few hundred rods and now there’s over 3,200. If something goes wrong there could be a fire you couldn’t put out that would take out a good part of the eastern seaboard.”

Sheehan countered that since 9/11 Pilgrim and other plants have alternative plans to ensure that the fuel pools remain full of water in an emergency. He noted that Entergy is already working to get spent fuel rods out of the pools and into dry cask storage.

Shelly and Ted Thomas said, for them, the NRC stands for “Neglects Research Concerns.”

“All the information is there,” Ted Thomas said. “They’re choosing economics over safety, and the NRC is looking the other way.”

While Pilgrim is set to shut down in 2019, news reports confirm that Entergy Corp. has also just entered into an agreement to shut down its Indian Point Nuclear Plant in New York by 2021.

Protesters say they’re concerned the NRC will, once again, white wash the seriousness of the problems in its final report in order to keep Pilgrim operating until its shutdown date. They say the cat’s out of the bag, however, since Jackson, an NRC team lead inspector, writes in his email that "The plant seems overwhelmed by just trying to run the station."

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